Having a professional e-mail address and telephone number will help you make a good first impression when you hear from customers, but having a nice logo and website will make them more likely to contact you in the first place.  As a businessperson, you don’t need to be a great designer if you can find someone who is.

Traditionally, hiring a designer involves first finding someone you can trust on quality, style, and budget.  This is not easy.  A new alternative is to host a design contest for your logo or website, let designers around the world submit entries, and award the prize to your favorite.  This way, there’s no risk of getting tricked into hiring a lousy designer.

Two websites that make it easy to host these contests are:
- 99 designs
- Crowdspring

Ballpark costs are about $250 for a logo and $500 for a basic website design, including the contest prize money and administrative fees.  The average turnaround time is about a week, with somewhere around 25 entries.  Of course, you’ll get more entries with a larger prize or if your contest guidelines spark the designers’ creativity.

If you want to touch up your company’s look, holding a design contest may be a good way to do it.

You may want to consider setting up a toll-free 800 number so that you can:
· Project a more professional image
· Make it easier for your customers to reach you

Toll-free numbers used to be quite expensive - something only a big company would have. This is no longer true - you can set up a toll-free number starting at around $10-20 a month. But since most of your customers don’t know this, having one is a sure way to impress them. You’re also more likely to get customers from outside your immediate area to call in, since they don’t have to pay long-distance charges.

Here’s how it works. You set up a phone menu, and when your customers dial in, they pick what extension to call. You can forward these extensions to you and your colleagues’ local numbers and cell phones. If it’s after hours or you miss the call, their voicemail will be delivered to you via e-mail.

Here are some service providers that you can try:
· GotVMail - USA & Canada
· Toll Free Forwarding - International
· BT RingCentral - United Kingdom
· dm Club - United Kingdom

Do you have friends who talk to long-distance customers?